Search results:

Questioners (Paraphrased)

*Exact transcription impossible as everyone is talking over each other* Basically a couple of fans were talking with Brandon about making Legion into a TV series; one person thought that in the pilot, the aspects need to be actors, while the other thought that (for the pilot only) they should not be seen, so Stephen looks like a wacky eccentric talking to himself about solving mysteries, and then the episodes would reveal the individuality of the aspects.

Brandon Sanderson

*paraphrase* Brandon agreed that the second approach would be very clever, but that it would be very hard to convince (someone - not sure if it was himself, or the aspects, or who!) to do that, because he has them all cast in his head.

*verbatim* Normally I don't cast actors in the roles in my books, they're just who they are, but each of the aspects is an actor to me. If you look really closely, you might be able to guess who they are, because they're all famous actors.

We sold it to Lionsgate, and they never made it, and the option lapsed. We've sold it to somebody else now, but we’ll see if it ever gets made.

Questioner

Have you been approached by anybody about making a movie?

Brandon Sanderson

Okay, "making a movie," okay, okay. *sighs* *crowd laughs* So, Holywood. Holywood! Holywood is this-- they do this thing where they option books, right? And this-- most of the deals you see, they get signed, are what we call an option. They come in, they say, "We think we might be able to get a movie made, but we don't know for sure. So we're going to rent the rights from you." Against-- Like leasing. Renting to own. Where we pay you a certain amount every year that's against a big payout, and if we ever decide to make a big payout we buy the rights outright. But until then we can rent them for like five years and pay you every year or eighteen months. These are very common in Holywood. They happen a lot. And it's-- now that I've become involved in this it's kind of interesting to me that, like, when something gets optioned it's like, "Huge news! Oh, it's gonna get made!" But one in thirty of these get made <by general>. And most of the deals you're hearing about are those. As well you'll probably hear about this deal, you'll be like, "Oh, somebody's going to make this film." And then five years later you're like, "Whatever happened to that?" Well, it was just an option deal. And I've had like ten things get optioned. Like I've sold things over and over again and stuff like that. And so yes, people have my works optioned. Nothing I've done has ever gone past screenplay except for Alcatraz, at DreamWorks Animation which went to storyboard before then they decided to kill it. So, yeah obviously you didn't get that movie. That was years ago. They made the Croods instead. *crowd laughs* No, really, I-- those were the two competing projects. So I got-- So nothing has gone past screenplay-- I have gotten a screenplay a couple times before, but the step after that is like to get a director attached, and then like, you know, then get a greenlight, or get actors attached. The greenlight is the hard thing. The only thing I know of that got greenlit recently is The Sword of Shannara, which is coming out in January I think. Everything else I know is just an option. And so, yeah. But Steelheart's at Shawn Levy's company, who did the Night at the Museum films. Emperor's Soul is at DMG who were producers on two of the Iron Man films. The rest of the Cosmere is optioned by somebody else, but they haven't announced it yet, so I can't talk about it. They're very specific about stuff like that. Legion's been optioned twice, and both people have not been able to get that made as a television show. I mean, everything's been optioned.

Brandon Sanderson

Movie/Television Updates

Other Properties

Legion and Dark One are currently in negotiations. The rest of the Cosmere is covered by the DMG deal, as we want one company working on that at a time. We have a small deal for Defending Elysium that has it under option with a screenwriter, and the first draft screenplay is good. That leaves Alcatraz, The Rithmatist, and a couple of shorts (Dreamer, Perfect State, Firstborn) with no options right now.

Questioner

How much more do you want to write about Stephen Leeds?

Brandon Sanderson

How much more do I want to write about Stephen Leeds, from Legion? I want to write a decent amount more. I have finished Legion 2, which you may have noticed, which is called Legion: Skin Deep. I had a really great name for a title, but I don't know if I can use it because Skin Deep is a reference to beauty, right? But I thought a great title would be Legion: Lies of the Beholder. I like the pun on that but that is also "beauty is in the eyes of the beholder" so I can't make them all puns off of beauty. The original concept with Legion was to do a short that would--I imagine being a television show, it's how I imagined it and I wanted to do future episodes, so to speak. I particularly love the episode format they are doing for Sherlock on the BBC, if you guys have seen that, where your season is three hour-and-a-half long mini movies basically. And I love that format for a television show, I wish we could get more television shows doing that. I would rather sink my teeth into an hour-and-a-half long episode that has character growth, real growth and development, progress and the next one doesn't just hit the reset button and say, another adventure. It is progressing the characters further. I'd rather get three of those in a season than a twenty-two episode where of those episodes eighteen are just yet another adventure with no progress. And so--anyway that's how I imagine that.

Questioner

When Legion came out there was talk Hollywood was already interested.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, we sold the rights and then they let them lapse. They kept the rights for two years and they let them lapse.

Brandon Sanderson

Tertiary Projects

Legion

The new Marvel television show is unrelated, but it being out killed our chances of a television show based on these books. I do want to do a third story, but might save it for another short story collection (with all of the non-cosmere works like this, Perfect State, etc.)

I really wanted Legion to be a television show, even before I started writing the first story. So we might rebrand them, calling them simply Leeds, and try another run through Hollywood with the new titles. If so, another novella would certainly help us get attention there. We'll see.

Brandon Sanderson

Movie/Television Updates

Stephen Leeds/Legion

The Stephen Leeds stories have recently been optioned for a television series by a new production company. This is the property's third time being picked up for an option, so I'm hopeful we'll make it work this time. I don't believe the company has been announced officially yet, so we'll hold off on mentioning them for now. But we're probably in the middle of Step Two for this one.

Questioner
[PENDING REVIEW]

Is there any possibility of a Legion television show?

Brandon Sanderson
[PENDING REVIEW]

There is, we have sold the rights to a company called Cinaflex in Canada, they are trying to develop one right now. Hopefully, it turns out alright. We probably have to change the title because there is a Marvel Legion series, we would probably just call it Leeds.

Questioner
[PENDING REVIEW]

That would be awesome. What about Snapshot?

Brandon Sanderson
[PENDING REVIEW]

Snapshot's at MGM, they have a really sharp screenplay that I love. Best screenplay based on my work that anyone's ever turned in. I'm really, really excited and hopeful for that one but there is no greenlight yet so who knows.